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{\parindent0pt\obeylines
Holden Rohrer
Markley
English Composition II
11 Oct 2020
}
\centerline{\large\bfseries Henrietta Lacks and Medical Ethics}
\iffalse
Henrietta Lacks's immortal cells normalized the idea of in-vitro
research and in-vitro therapies.
Research on human biology is less haphazard and more...
Thesis: Generically, new research technology
Question: How did Henrietta Lacks's cells affect how I think about
disease or being healthy?
Answer: The image of "cells" being the thing that makes you unhealthy
makes germs more concrete? Lol no that's the germ theory of medicine.
They affected how I think about research
Question: How did the speculum affect how I think about disease or being
healthy?
Answer: Sanitary medical instruments became more important. Women's
health was considered more serious?? Specialized instruments were
normalized??
\fi
{\itshape The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks} investigates the medical
and personal timelines of Henrietta Lacks's immortal HeLa cells.
Their discovery essentially created the field of in-vitro (in a
laboratory environment) research and therapy.
New vaccines, cell-culture techniques, and the technology to grow stem
cells in a petri dish were all invented because of HeLa.
But HeLa also helped construct a more ethical research paradigm, under
the doctrine of informed consent.
Generally, new avenues for research require new limits to be put on
them, and HeLa and the technologies it's helped produce have been no
different.
Gene sequencing, for example, has emerged as a great new frontier, but
brings with it the baggage of genetic privacy, as was discovered by the
Lacks family in 2013.
The widened options new research technologies bring reveal ethical
blindspots or create new ones, and the subsequent backlashes build new
norms protecting the health of participants, like informed consent.
``Illegal, Immoral, and Deplorable'' describes one such backlash.
The respected physician Chester Southam feared ``Henrietta's cancer
cells could infect the scientists working on them,''
\autocite[127]{Lacks} so he tested his theory on subjects he lied to,
injecting them with Henrietta's cells to see if the subjects got cancer.
In at least one subject, ``Henrietta's cancer cells metastasized.''
\autocite[128]{Lacks}
Southam rationalized his violation of subjects' bodily autonomy by
claiming his trials weren't meaningfully injurious, but three doctors
saw a striking similarity to Nazi medical experiments prosecuted during
the Nuremberg trials.
The Board of Regents ``found Southam and Mandel guilty of ``fraud or
deceit and unprofessional conduct in the practice of
medicine,''\thinspace'' \autocite[134]{Lacks} causing the National
Institute of Health to establish that ``all proposals for research on
human subjects had to be approved by review boards''
\autocite[135]{Lacks}.
This sort of experiment was neither viable nor ``necessary'' before
HeLa, meaning HeLa was crucial in bringing attention to this ethical
crisis.
The novel technology of HeLa led to an abusive experiment being revealed
to the public, and the NIH and others stepped in to protect patients
from being unknowingly included in studies like this.
The backlashes against new technology aren't always entirely rational or
altruistic, however.
Generally, backlashes aim to protect the public from a perceived harm,
real or not.
``SCIENTISTS CREATE MONSTERS'' \autocite[142]{Lacks} headlined in the
early 60s, attacking somatic cell fusion, another technology made
possible by HeLa.
``Cell sex'' let researchers ``begin mapping human genes to specific
chromosomes,'' \autocite[142]{Lacks} develop ``cancer therapies like
Herceptin,'' \autocite[142]{Lacks} and ``identify the blood groups that
increased the safety of transfusions.'' \autocite[142]{Lacks}
But the fact that this technology fused different species was alarming.
The prohibition wasn't institutionalized like informed consent, but
mouse-human hyrbids still held stigma.
Many new technologies garner similar responses, but the backlash
rarely sticks if the criticism is invalid.
% improve
The book centrally contends with another rights issue---what control the
Lacks (and medical patients, in general) deserve over their cells.
The historical conflict can't be resolved because her cells can't be
taken differently: ```They were taken in a bad way but they are doing
good for the world,' [Alfred Lacks Carter] says.'\thinspace''
But many of the injustices that occurred after her death can: ``doctors
and scientists repeatedly failed to ask her family for consent as they
revealed Lacks’s name publicly, gave her medical records to the media,
and even published her cells' genome online.'' \autocite{Nature}
Because full genome sequencing has been made so cheaply available, a
researcher, without asking the Lacks, published HeLa's genome in 2013.
``The work would become a bioethical lightning rod''
\autocite{Callaway}.
The incident raised questions about genetic privacy and scientists'
awareness that cell lines might even be deanonymized in the future.
The development of genome sequencing raised new questions intrinsic to
the technology like ``can a genome be deanonymized?'' and ``should the
genomic data be protected?'' but it also dredges up the same old
concern: what rights the Lacks have over Henrietta's cells.
The author chose to unpublish it and, with the Lacks's approval,
republished it with restrictions.
This microcosmic justice shows that new techniques and technologies
amplify existing problems and create entirely new ones, but the
public criticism received solves or mitigates those same problems.
\printbibliography
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